Source: https://twitter.com/polygraphing/status/701108298876108800
Picking winners and @stevenljoyce’s repayable grants to 11 more tech start-ups @JordNZ
13 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking, survivor principle Tags: corporate welfare, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, Hollywood economics, industry policy, picking losers, picking winners
Minister for Science and Innovation Steven Joyce picked a few more winners today. Eleven more start-up technology companies are to be funded $450,000 each in repayable loans to commercialise their technology. The loans are from Callaghan Innovation’s incubator network.
To cut a long diatribe short, I find these sums of money rather piddling. I have encountered this corporate welfare program before at a presentation.
My reaction then as is now: by handing out such small grants, some will succeed, some will fail. Importantly, there will never be one big disaster to bring the whole show down. There is political safety in diversification.
This is not the case with, for example, film subsidies. If Sir Peter Jackson and others finally produce a box office bomb, it will be all too glaring that the taxpayers backed a Hollywood loser with hundreds of millions of dollars. $500 million in subsidies in the case of Avatar.
By peppering small sums of money across the economy, there is no similar risk from this repayable grant scheme for the commercialisation of products.
Creative destruction of camera sales is not yet complete
13 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, financial economics, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: camera phones, cameras, cell phones, creative destruction, mobile phones
Source: A Few Thoughts About the Camera Market via Paul Kirby
Wireless broadband penetration rate in New Zealand vs OECD
03 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in industrial organisation, technological progress Tags: broadband, creative destruction, technology diffusion
How profitable are the tech giants?
03 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in fisheries economics, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: Apple, creative destruction, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter
I did not know Yahoo was still in business.
Creative destruction in car industry market shares
21 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, international economics, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction
Creative destruction in world’s most valuable company
16 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, financial economics Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness
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The discovery void in antibiotic drugs
13 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, health economics Tags: creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, intellectual monopolies, patents and copyrights, research prizes, The Great Escape
No new classes of antibiotics has been discovered since 1987. They are looked upon as a poor investment by pharmaceutical entrepreneurs because there are so many generic competitors. To make it even more complicated, any new antibiotic that might be invented would have to be held in reserve for a major case of an antibiotic resistant infection.
Creative destruction in desks
05 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics, economics of media and culture Tags: creative destruction
Creative destruction in digital cameras
03 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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